The Trail Book Part 10

"'It is a risk,' said the Dine.

"And as he moved into the wind I knew the smell of him, and it was the man we had seen at Dripping Spring; not the hunter, but the one who had joined him.

"'Not so much risk as the chance of not finding the right house in the dark,' said Kokomo; 'and the girl has no one belonging to her. Who shall say that she did not go of her own accord?'

"'At any rate,' the Dine laughed, 'I know she must be as beautiful as you say she is, since you are willing to run the risk of my seeing her.'

"They moved off, and the wind walking on the pine needles covered what they said, but I remembered what I had heard because they smelled of mischief.

"Two nights later I remembered it again when the Delight-Makers came out of the dark in three bands and split the people's sides with laughter.

They were disguised in black-and-white paint and daubings of mud and feathers, but there was a Dine among them. By the smell I knew him. He was a tall man who tumbled well and kept close to Kokomo. But a Dine is an enemy. Tse-tse-yote had told me. Therefore I kept close at his heels as they worked around toward the house of Pitahaya, and my neck bristled. I could see that the Dine had noticed me. He grew a little frightened, I think, and whipped at me with the whip of feathers which the Koshare carried to tickle the tribesmen. I laid back my ears--I am Kabeyde, and it is not for the Dine to flick whips at me. All at once there rose a shouting for Tse-tse, who came running and beat me over the head with his bow-case.

"'They will think I set you on to threaten the Koshare because they mocked me,' he said. 'Have you not done me mischief enough already?'

"That was when we were back in the cave, where he penned me till morning. There was no way I could tell him that there was a Dine among the Koshare."

"But I thought--" began Oliver, he looked over to where Arrumpa stood drawing young boughs of maple through his mouth like a boy stripping currants. "Couldn't you just have told him?"

"In the old days," said Moke-icha, "men spoke with beasts as brothers.

The Queres had come too far on the Man Trail. I had no words, but I remembered the trick he had taught me, about what to do when I met a Dine. I laid back my ears and snarled at him.

"'What!' he said; 'will you make a Dine of _me_?' I saw him frown, and suddenly he slapped his thigh as a man does when thought overtakes him.

Being but a lad he would not have dared say what he thought, but he took to spending the night on top of the kiva. I would look out of my cave and see him there curled up in a corner, or pacing to and fro with the dew on his blanket and his face turned to the souls of the prayer plumes drifting in a wide band across the middle heaven.

"I would have been glad to keep him company, but as neither Tse-tse nor Willow-in-the-Wind paid any attention to me in those days, I decided that I might as well go with the men and see for myself what lay at the other end of the Salt Trail.

"I gave them a day's start, so that I might not be turned back; but it was not necessary, since no man looked back or turned around on that journey, and no one spoke except those who had been over the trail at least two times. They ate little,--fine meal of parched corn mixed with water,--and what was left in the cup was put into the earth for a thank offering. No one drank except as the leader said they could, and at night they made prayers and songs.

"The trail leaves the mesa at the Place of the Gap, a dry gully snaking its way between puma-colored hills and boulders big as kivas. Lasting Water is at the end of the second day's journey; rainwater that slips down into a black basin with rock overhanging, cool as an olla. The rocks in that place when struck give out a pleasant sound. Beyond the Gap there is white sand in waves like water, wild hills and raw, red canons. Around a split rock the trail dips suddenly to Sacred Water, shallow and white-bordered like a great dead eye."

"I know that place," said the Navajo, "and I think this must be true, for there is a trail there which bites deep into the granite."

"It was deep and polished even in my day," said Moke-icha, "but that did not interest me. There was no kill there larger than rabbits, and when I had seen the men cast prayer plumes on the Sacred Water and begin to sc.r.a.pe up the salt for their packs, I went back to Ty-uonyi. It was not until I got back to Lasting Water that I picked up the trail of the Dine. I followed it half a day before it occurred to me that they were going to Ty-uonyi. One of the smells--there were three of them--was the Dine who had come in with the Koshare. I remembered the broken plaster on the wall and Tse-tse asleep on the housetops. _Then_ I hurried.

"It was blue midnight and the scent fresh on the gra.s.s as I came up the Rito. I heard a dog bark behind the first kiva, and, as I came opposite Rock-Overhanging, the sound of feet running. I smelled Dine going up the wall and slipped back in my hurry, but as I came over the roof of the kiva a tumult broke out in the direction of Pitahaya's house. There was a scream and a scuffle. I saw Tse-tse running and sent him the puma cry at which does asleep with their fawns tremble. Down in the long pa.s.sage between Pitahaya's court and the gate of Rock-Overhanging, Tse-tse answered with the hunting-whistle.

"There was a fight going on in the pa.s.sage. I could feel the cool draught from the open gate,--they must have opened it from the inside after scaling the wall by the broken plaster,--and smelled rather than saw that one man held the pa.s.sage against Tse-tse. He was armed with a stone hammer, which is no sort of weapon for a narrow pa.s.sage. Tse-tse had caught bow and quiver from the arms that hung always at the inner entrance of the pa.s.sage, but made no attempt to draw. He was crouched against the wall, knife in hand, watching for an opening, when he heard me padding up behind him in the darkness.

"'Good! Kabeyde,' he cried softly; 'go for him.'

"I sprang straight for the opening I could see behind the Dine, and felt him go down as I cleared the entrance. Tse-tse panted behind me,--'Follow, follow!' I could hear the men my cry had waked, pouring out of the kivas, and knew that the Dine we had knocked over would be taken care of. We picked up the trail of those who had escaped, straight across the Rito and over the south wall, but it was an hour before I realized that they had taken Willow-in-the-Wind with them. Old Pitahaya was dead without doubt, and the man who had taken Willow-in-the-Wind was, by the smell, the same that had come in with Kokomo and the Koshare.

"We were hot on their trail, and by afternoon of the next day I was certain that they were making for Lasting Water. So I took Tse-tse over the rim of the Gap by a short cut which I had discovered, which would drop us back into the trail before they had done drinking. Tse-tse, who trusted me to keep the scent, was watching ahead for a sight of the quarry. Thus he saw the Dine before I winded them. I don't know whether they were just a hunting-party, or friends of those we followed. We dropped behind a boulder and Tse-tse counted while I lifted every scent.

"'Five,' he said, 'and the Finisher of the Paths of Our Lives knows how many more between us and Lasting Water!'

"We did not know yet whether they had seen us, but as we began to move again cautiously, a fox barked in the scrub that was not a fox. Off to our left another answered him. So now we were no longer hunters, but hunted.

"Tse-tse slipped his tunic down to his middle and, unbinding his queue, wound his long hair about his head to make himself look as much like a Dine as possible. I could see thought rippling in him as he worked, like wind on water. We began to snake between the cactus and the black rock toward the place where the fox had last barked."

"But _toward_ them---" Oliver began.

"They were between us and Lasting Water,"--Moke-icha looked about the listening circle and the Indians nodded, agreeing. "When a fox barked again, Tse-tse answered with the impudent folly of a young kit talking back to his betters. Evidently the man on our left was fooled by it, for he sheered off, but within a bowshot they began to close on us again.

"We had come to a thicket of mesquite from which a man might slip unnoticed to the head of the gully, provided no one watched that particular spot too steadily. There we lay among the thorns and the shadows were long in the low sun. Close on our right a twig snapped and I began to gather myself for the spring. The ground sloped a little before us and gave the advantage. The hand of Tse-tse-yote came along the back of my neck and rested there. 'If a puma lay up here during the sun,' he whispered, 'this is the hour he would go forth to his hunting.

He would go stretching himself after sleep and having no fear of man, for where Kabeyde lies up, who expects to find man also.' His hand came under my chin as his custom was in giving orders. This was how I understood it; this I did--"

The great cat bounded lightly to the ground, took two or three stretchy steps, shaking the sleep from her flanks, yawned prodigiously, and trotted off toward a thicket of wild plums into which she slipped like a beam of yellow light into water. A moment later she reappeared on the opposite side, bounded back and settled herself on the boulder. Around the circle ran the short "Huh! Huh!" of Indian approval. The Navajo shifted his blanket.

"A Dine could have done no more for a friend," he admitted.

"I see," said Oliver. "When the Dine saw you coming out of the mesquite they would have been perfectly sure there was no man there. But anyway, they might have taken a shot at you."

"And the tw.a.n.g of the bowstring and the thrashing about of the kill in the thicket would have told Tse-tse exactly where _they_ were," said the Navajo. "The Dine when they hunt man do not turn aside for a puma."

"The hardest part of it all," said Moke-icha, "was to keep from showing I winded him. I heard the Dine move off, fox-calling to one another, and at last I smelled Tse-tse working down the gully. He paid no attention to me whatever; his eyes were fixed on the Dine who stood by the spring with his back to him looking down on the turkey girl who was huddled against the rocks with her hands tied behind her. The Dine looked down with his arms folded, evil-smiling. She looked up and I saw her spit at him. The man took her by the shoulder, laughing still, and spun her up standing. Half a bowshot away I heard Tse-tse-yote. 'Down! Down!' he shouted. The girl dropped like a quail. The Dine, whirling on his heel, met the arrow with his throat, and pitched choking. I came as fast as I could between the boulders--I am not built for running--Tse-tse had unbound the girl's hands and she leaned against him.

"Breathing myself before drinking, I caught a new scent up the Gap where the wind came from, but before I had placed it there came a little sc.r.a.pe on the rocks under the roof of Lasting Water, small, like the rasp of a snake coiling. I had forgot there were three Dine at Ty-uonyi; the third had been under the rock drinking. He came crawling now with his knife in his teeth toward Tse-tse. Me he had not seen until he came round the singing rock, face to face with me...

"When it was over," said Moke-icha, "I climbed up the black roof of Lasting Water to lick a knife cut in my shoulder. Tse-tse talked to the girl, of all things, about the love-gift she had put in the cave for me.

'Moke-icha had eaten it before I found her,' he insisted, which was unnecessary. I lay looking at the Dine I had killed and licking my wound till I heard, around the bend of the Gap, the travel song of the Queres.

"It was the Salt Pack coming back, every man with his load on his shoulders. They put their hands in their mouths when they saw Tse-tse.

There was talk; Willow-in-the-Wind told them something. Tse-tse turned the man he had shot face upward. There was black-and-white paint on his body; the stripes of the Koshare do not come off easily. I saw Tse-tse look from the man to Kokomo and the face of the Koshare turned grayish.

I had lived with man, and man-thoughts came to me. I had tasted blood of my master's enemies; also Kokomo was afraid, and that is an offense to me. I dropped from where I lay ... I had come to my full weight ... I think his back was broken.

"It is the Way Things Are," said Moke-icha. "Kokomo had let in the Dine to kill Pitahaya to make himself chief, and he would have killed Tse-tse for finding out about it. That I saw and smelled in him. But I did not wait this time to be beaten with my master's bow-case. I went back to Shut Canon, for now that I had killed one of them, it was not good for me to live with the Queres. Nevertheless, in the rocks above Ty-uonyi you can still see the image they made of me."

VIII

YOUNG-MAN-WHO-NEVER-TURNS-BACK: A TELLING OF THE TALLEGEWI, BY ONE OF THEM

It could only have been for a few moments at the end of Moke-icha's story, before the cliff picture split like a thin film before the dancing circles of the watchmen's lanterns, and curled into the shadows between the cases. A thousand echoes broke out in the empty halls and m.u.f.fled the voices as the rings of light withdrew down the long gallery in glimmering reflections. When they pa.s.sed to the floor below a very remarkable change had come over the landscape.

The Buffalo Chief and Moke-icha had disappeared. A little way ahead the trail plunged down the leafy tunnel of an ancient wood, along which the children saw the great elk trotting leisurely with his cows behind him, flattening his antlers over his back out of the way of the low-branching maples. The switching of the brush against the elk's dun sides startled the little black bear, who was still riffling his bee tree. The children watched him rise inquiringly to his haunches before he scrambled down the trail out of sight.

"Lots of those fellows about in my day," said the Mound-Builder. "We used to go for them in the fall when they grew fat on the dropping nuts and acorns. Elk, too. I remember a ten-p.r.o.nged buck that I shot one winter on the Elk's-Eye River..."

"The Muskingum!" exclaimed an Iroquois, who had listened in silence to the puma's story. "Did you call it that too? Elk's-Eye! Clear brown and smooth-flowing. That's the Scioto Trail, isn't it?" he asked of the Mound-Builder.

"You could call it that. There was a cut-off at Beaver Dam to Flint Ridge and the crossing of the Muskingum, and another that led to the mouth of the Kanawha where it meets the River of White-Flashing."

"He means the Ohio," explained the Iroquois to the children. "At flood the whole surface of the river would run to white riffles like the flash of a water-bird's wings. But the French called it La Belle Riviere. I'm an Onondaga myself," he added, "and in my time the Five Nations held all the territory, after we had driven out the Talle-gewi, between the Lakes and the O-hey-yo." He stretched the word out, giving it a little different turn. "Indians' names talk little," he laughed, "but they say much."

"Like the trails," agreed the Mound-Builder, who was one of the Tallegewi himself, "every word is the expression of a need. We had a trade route over this one for copper which we fetched from the Land of the Sky-Blue Water and exchanged for sea-sh.e.l.ls out of the south. At the mouth of the Scioto it connected with the Kaskaskia Trace to the Missi-Sippu, where we went once a year to shoot buffaloes on the plains."